Noah Davis, the nonfungible token (NFT) specialist at auction house Christie’s, has said he’s leaving the position in July to take up a post as brand lead for the CryptoPunks NFT collection with Yuga Labs.
Announcing the move on Sunday in a Twitter thread, Davis looked to quash any anxieties holders had regarding the future of one of the oldest NFT projects, saying he “will not f*ck with the punks.”
What does that mean? It means no Punks on lunchboxes or cringe TV shows/shitty movies. It means no arbitrary rushed utility or thoughtless airdrops. It means if you love your Punk(s) because they are what they are (just Punks) then you and I see eye to eye…
— Noah (@NonFungibleNoah) June 19, 2022
He invited CryptoPunk owners to schedule a talk with him about the project’s future at the NFT NYC event and said the new position wouldn’t take away from his own NFT project.
Davis is responsible for the record-breaking auction of Beeple’s Everydays: The First 5000 Days NFT, which sold for over $69 million in March 2021.
Yuga Labs acquired the intellectual property of the CryptoPunks collection from Larva Labs in March, saying it would turn over full commercial rights to the owners, a promise yet to be realized.
But, Yuga Labs co-founder Wylie Aronow aka Gargamel addressed the holdup in a series of tweets on Sunday, writing it was “too significant to rush” and that new terms “will be rolling out in the next couple of weeks.”
With the announcement of Davis’ move and the new terms set to take effect soon, some are alleging that insiders had prior knowledge of the information, citing the surging sales volume of the collection.
Ok so no one’s going to address the obvious insider trading that happened in the last 48 hours?
Chart: @punk9059 https://t.co/56s56D5Nw1 pic.twitter.com/beNkWbAc2Y
— Chainleft (@ChainLeftist) June 19, 2022
According to OpenSea, 39 sales of the CryptoPunks collection have taken place since the announcement, with 101 sales in total on Sunday, up from the only 19 sold the day prior,…
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